Magnesium
By Georgina Drew
A flight takes off from Kathmandu and miniature bottles of water are distributed to passengers. The contents come from the Aravalli Range in northwest India and the label boasts that the water, now trapped in plastic, had to traverse layers of clay and alluvial sediment to reach underground reservoirs. Worry not, the label requests, if silvery particles appear, as these indicate the presence of the water鈥檚 鈥渦nique mineral composition.鈥 Instead of a calorie count, the bottle prominently lists 100 micrograms of calcium and 50 micrograms of magnesium per serving. These are meant to add to the 鈥済ustatory sensation鈥 (Biro 2019, 15) of the two-gulp serving as it is imbibed thousands of feet above the earth; an act of elemental consumption that connects the soft tissues of the traveller to the nourishing materiality of the land below.
After landing in India鈥檚 capital city, I refill the same small bottle in a reverse osmosis water filter mounted above the sink in a friend鈥檚 kitchen. This device removes any and all extraneous elements, leaving only a serving of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen鈥攑lus or minus the solvents that may remain. At its core, reverse osmosis works upon a fundamental dislike of hard water, the kind that contains nourishing supplies of calcium and magnesium alongside ill-making elements such as lead, iron, radium, and arsenic. After years of public distrust of municipal water supplies, many urban denizens strongly prefer this 鈥淩O鈥 water. Its use in Indian homes has grown exponentially since the early 2000s. Along with the perception of improved water quality, RO devices ensure that, without the trace silvery wisps, there will be no residues of hardened and suspect white spots that need to be scrubbed from pots, pans, and faucet drains.
While in New Delhi, an environmental architect I interview brings up the topic of RO water and scoffs at the 鈥渦nimaginably stupid鈥 technology. Reverse osmosis typically wastes three liters of scarce potable water to produce one liter of mineral-free water. The device then deposits the rejected liters of element-rich liquid back into the ground where it leads to further groundwater hardening. This water is consumed unfiltered, but after boiling, by low-income residents. Yet, since people now equate the heavily processed blandness of RO water with 鈥減ure鈥 water, my interlocutor quips that many believe that the mineral-free version is 鈥渉ow water is supposed to taste.鈥 This leads to a hesitation to consume the sweet and mineral-rich water found in public wells. It also deters civic concern for the preservation of those communal infrastructures.
The rise of RO water matters for a country such as India where middle-class women frequently experience lowered bone density as a result of mineral deficiency. This trend propels into existence a surfeit of products that aim to supplement the deficiencies in calcium and vitamin D. Few, however, seem to realize that magnesium is also a cornerstone building block for strong bones and teeth. As the third most prevalent element in the world鈥檚 oceans, and as a key ingredient in numerous whole foods, we are beings whose biotic history is awash in magnesium.
In addition to its bone-strengthening attributes, magnesium is notably important for its role as an enabler of neurotransmissions. When it is lacking, the body protests with fatigue, muscle spasms, seizures, and coronary ailments. There is even some indication that magnesium helps to boost the immune system and protect against depression due to its complex enzymatic interactions. Magnesium, it appears, is something of a neurological companion element for humans, much the way that protozoa and bacteria are companion species for our skin and internal organs (Haraway 2003, 32).
Might we, as that bottle of airplane water portends, awaken to the significance of magnesium? In my own purse, I am now rarely without a dose of the element to ward off the threat of headaches, a practice given to me under medical advice. For the aches and pains of a neck contorted from years of air travel and laptop use, on my bedside sits a magnesium gel that, blended with arnica, alleviates muscle tension. In South Asia, the old RO devices in the homes of health-conscious friends in New Delhi are being replaced with newer machines that proclaim鈥攙ia several well-placed stickers鈥攖hat calcium and magnesium are added 鈥渂ack in鈥 to the final product. While this does not correct the problems of wasted water or groundwater hardening, the technology鈥檚 modification indicates a begrudging acceptance of elemental vitality.
The Anthropocene is most often discussed as an era wherein humans have altered the globe and its environment more than natural cycles would have allowed. In this Anthropocenic world, thinking with magnesium enables insight into how our impulses to manage external ecologies have begun to change our own physiology and hence the balance of our internal ecologies. Through banal efforts to manage water to scientistic standards of quantified purity, many individuals and institutions in South Asia and beyond are removing the elemental agents that propel neurons, pacify muscles, and regularize our beating hearts. The hard matter of those wisps of magnesium, in other words, forces a reconsideration of how the mineral world moves through our beings and nourishes everything from our soft innards to our fortified endoskeletons. It is a symbolic and physical manifestation of the earthen elements pulsing through us.
That we have evolved through internalizing magnesium but must now work to put it back into our systems is a telltale sign that even our bodies have become a kind of 鈥淎nthropocene space鈥 (Moore 2016, 41), a point of focus that carries the mark of anthropogenic change. There are consequences to be experienced as a result. Our efforts to treat, to purify, and to control the planet鈥檚 resources according to human design threaten to bite back鈥攏ot in some distant apocalyptical future, but in physiological misfirings affecting our here and our now.
References
Biro, Andrew. 2019. 鈥.鈥澛Journal of Consumer Culture聽19, no. 2: 231鈥51.
Haraway, Donna. 2003.聽The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Moore, Amelia. 2016. 鈥.鈥澛Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute聽22, no. 1: 27鈥46.
This article was originally published in on 27 June 2019.